On An Underwood No. 5

Sunday, December 9, 2018

It is fair to say that the study of the life and art of Robert E. Howard owes a debt to the study of H. P. Lovecraft. The six-year friendship of the two pulpsters represents a substantial exchange of letters for both men, the moreso for Howard as his letters to Lovecraft constitute the bulk of his surviving correspondence; they influenced each other’s work, most notably in the shared setting of the Cthulhu Mythos; and they had many friends and associates in common, including Farnsworth Wright, E. Hoffmann Price, Clark Ashton Smith, Henry S. Whitehead, Wilfred Blanch Talman, C. L. Moore, and August Derleth.

Howardiana was published alongside Lovecraftiana in fanzines like The Acolyte and The Ghost, and Arkham House, founded to publish the works of Lovecraft, put out two collections of Howard’s fiction and poetry: Skull-Face and Others (1946), Always Comes Evening (1957) and The Dark Man and Others (1963). Arkham House would also publish parts of Lovecraft’s letters to Howard in the Selected Letters (1965-1976), which some years later would inspire the publication of the Selected Letters of Robert E. Howard (1989/1991, Necronomicon Press). The “Howard boom” in the 1960s also coincided with a surge in interest in Lovecraft’s fiction.

For all of their association, however, Robert E. Howard was almost nonexistent in the early biographies and memoirs about H. P. Lovecraft. Most of the Lovecraft’s autobiographies predate their correspondence; F. Lee Baldwin’s “H. P. Lovecraft: A Biographical Sketch” (Fantasy Magazine Apr 1935) lists Howard as one of Lovecraft’ many correspondents; W. Paul Cook makes no mention in “In Memoriam: H. P. Lovecraft” (1941), nor Winfield Townley Scott in “His Own Finest Creation: H. P. Lovecraft” (1944); Howard appears in August Derleth’s H. P. L.: A Memoir (1945) only as one of Lovecraft’s correspondents (Derleth 61), the creation of Unaussprechlichen Kulten and von Junzt (Derleth 72), and part of a lengthy quote from one of Lovecraft’s letters:

Our distinguished fellow weirdist Two-Gun Bob has succumbed to this fashion to the extent of hashing up his own middle name (Ervin—distinguished in Southern history for 200 years) and signing himself ‘Robert Eiarbihan Howard.’ (Derleth 54)

The lack of reference to Howard in memoirs of Lovecraft is understandable, most were written by friends who had never met or corresponded with Howard, and possibly never heard of him. Those who did not already know of the Lovecraft-Howard connection would learn little of it from the Lovecraft side of things, and that would focus strongly on Howard’s contributions to the shared Mythos—Lin Carter’s focus in Lovecraft: A Look Behind the Cthulhu Mythos (1972).

1975 was a seminal year in Lovecraft studies, with the publication of L. Sprague de Camp’s H. P. Lovecraft: A Biography, Frank Belknap Long’s Howard Phillips Lovecraft: Dreamer on the Night Side, and Willis Conover’s Lovecraft at Last. These three books published more biographical material on Lovecraft than had been readily available in any half-a-dozen Arkham House volumes—and at the same time opened a window on his relationship with, and comparisons to, Robert E. Howard. In the preface, de Camp wrote:

I learned about Lovecraft little by little. I also learned about other members of the Lovecraft-Weird Tales circle, especially Robert E. Howard. While I enjoyed Lovecraft’s fiction, Howard’s stories came closer to the kind of swashbuckling adventure-fantasy that I most enjoy reading and writing. Later, I became involved in completing, rewriting, and editing a number of Howard’s unpublished tales; but that is another story. (de Camp xi)

De Camp had been associated with the science fiction fan scene and a pulpster since the 1940s; in the 1950s he became associated with the Robert E. Howard properties, re-writing stories in the Gnome Press volumes The Coming of Conan (1953), King Conan (1953), Tales of Conan (1955), and co-authoring The Return of Conan (1957) with Björn Nyberg. In 1966, de Camp and Lin Carter began editing and writing the Conan series in paperback from Lancer, the beginning of the Howard Boom of the ‘60s. Robert E. Howard ‘zine Amra (1959) was already a focal point for Howard Studies, and de Camp’s articles from Amra were reprinted by Mirage Press in The Conan Reader (1968); de Camp and George Scrithers went on to edit two further collections of Howard-related articles by de Camp and others: The Conan Swordbook (1969) and The Conan Grimoire (1972). This familiarity with Robert E. Howard is a significant part of what de Camp brought to his approach to Lovecraft.

De Camp gave the standard note Howard was one of Lovecraft’s correspondents (de Camp 114, 301, 376), even paraphrasing notes from Howard’s letters to Lovecraft:

Sunday, December 2, 2018

For decades, fans have speculated
about the writing/publishing direction Robert E. Howard would have taken had he
not died on June 11, 1936. Questions such as what genres would he have
ventured into? Would he have continued writing Conan stories? Would he have published
more westerns? Some have decried these questions and their answers as vain
attempts or pure speculation. But are they? I think there is enough evidence
available to formulate a solid idea as to which publishing direction Howard was headed, and would have likely remained on for a spell, when he died, at least in terms of the first few years after his death: from
1936 to 1940. How is this possible, you might ask? My answer is based predominantly on three publishing trends Howard went through in the 12 years he was actively publishing his written material. And, a fourth, impending publishing period he was headed toward at the time of his death. Let me try explain what I mean.

Over the twelve years
Howard published stories, various patterns can be detected during these years. Not patterns of style, though they may be there as well, but in terms
of content and genres in which he wrote. In simplistic terms, Howard’s twelve-year
publishing career (from 1924 to 1936) can be divided into three periods lasting
about four years each. Based on several years of looking at Howard’s published
work from a birds-eye view (or holistic perspective), in my estimation this is
how I have charted his career. Initially, there is an amateur (juvenile) period
lasting from 1919 to 1923 (also a four-year period). I have not included this
period in the chart below, but it could easily be placed before the three periods
represented and aptly called his “amateur or juvenile period.”
This period is a smattering of both humorous and serious history, mystery, and
the like.

From 1924, when “Spear and Fang” is written and submitted to Weird Tales, to 1928, is a period I call Howard’s "discovery period" (or early fiction). Howard experiments with
several genres like horror, history, and fantasy. Additionally, it is during this period that
Howard begins to experiment with his adventure influences (e.g. Rafael Sabatini, H. Rider Haggard, et. al) using some of those elements in his
stories. He also nails down his prose pace, which is arguably the strongest
aspect of his fiction. In this first period Howard uses a smattering of historical (and mythological) elements to begin to create some interesting (albeit young-ish
in style and prose) stories. Because of this, Howard is directed
into the second period of publication, what I call his historical fiction
period, from 1928 to 1932. This period clearly shows Howard using aspects of
the history he has researched up to these years. Howard also begins to mix genres (e.g. adventure with horror) during this period.

Between the first period
(early fiction) and the second period (historical fiction), Howard creates two
characters (Solomon Kane and Kull) who overlap these two periods to generate
what is to come in his third period of publication: what I call the adventure
fantasy period. From 1932 (with the publication of Conan) to 1936, Howard’s
primary attention is on adventure fantasy. During this period, Howard is developing the Hyborian Age and
giving the reading public Conan the Cimmerian, his most popular character.

Throughout these three
periods, beginning with the latter part of the first period up to the early
part of the third period, Howard published his boxing stories as a separate
entity (or genre, if you will) altogether. What I mean by this is that his boxing stories do not neatly
fall into any of the three categories as primary works reflecting those
categories. There are elements from each of those periods present in his boxing
stories, but they stand alone as an individual genre overlapping the periods. A
very simple chart/table of these periods would look something like this:

1924—1928

1928—1932

1932—1936

Early Fiction

Historical Fiction

Adventure Fantasy

Smattering of genres, some historical

Primarily historical, some fantasy

Primarily Fantasy, some western

(From
the latter part of the first period to the early part of the third period —
boxing fiction)

NB: This idea (and above chart) is a
general, broad sweep of Howard’s writing career. A much more specific account
could be created, examining specific stories and genres with explanations as to
why they fit into each of these periods. Perhaps something to consider for a
future article. Let us just say, these three periods stand out over Howard’s
twelve-year publishing career, and as presented should be sufficient, along
with other evidence presented a little later, to demonstrate
Howard’s fictional direction at the time of his death. It should also be
pointed out that once Howard moved away from a character (e.g. Solomon Kane,
Kull, etc.) to begin a new character or genre trend, he did not returned to that
character.

Now, with regard to what
has been typically dismissed as speculation about the writing/publishing
direction Howard was headed at the time of his death, using Howard’s letters,
his published fiction, and Novalyne Price Ellis’ book One Who Walked Alone, I think a fourth period, which was developing
by June of 1936, can be determined.

As mentioned above, regarding
the third period of Howard’s publishing career (the adventure fantasy period),
Conan was the dominant character around which Howard build some of his most
popular stories. But what was Howard saying about Conan in the last year or so
of his life? By December of 1935, Howard confessed to Lovecraft, “The last yarn
I sold to Weird Tales—and it well may be the last fantasy I’ll ever write—was a
three-part Conan serial which was the bloodiest and most sexy weird story I
ever wrote.” (CL 3.393) Aside from
possibly Novalyne Price, Lovecraft is the first person to whom Howard admits
he is moving away from adventure fantasy (and from Conan). Moreover, Howard has spent several
years discussing the Texas and western frontier. These discussions have likely
fueled his desire to write more about that topic.

By the Spring of 1936,
Howard’s writing slowed due to the care he was giving his mother. However, by
this time, he had stopped writing adventure fantasy altogether and was writing
and publishing predominantly westerns. His focus was on Breckenridge Elkins,
Buckner J. Grimes, and Pike Bearfield. Even so, months before this season, while
he was still working on Conan stories, Howard admitted to Novalyne Price that
he wanted to write a story (perhaps a novel) about the Texas frontier. (OWWA 223, 227) Because Conan was Howard’s
bread and butter character, He and Price discuss Conan and the barbarian versus civilization issue fairly regularly (or at
least Howard frequently brings it up in their conversations). On several
occasion, Price mentions that Howard told her he was ready to stop writing
Conan stories and focus his attention on westerns or his Texas frontier novel.
And she had agreed with that idea and expressed hope that he would. (OWWA 223, 226-227)

Howard’s western output
had increased in the months prior to his death. He had also corresponded with
Jack Byrne at Munsey Publication about a new humorous character in the same
vein as Breckenridge Elkins. Howard explained to Byrne, “I have in mind a new character,
Pike Bearfield, of Wolf Mountain, Texas, about as big, dumb, and ludicrous as
B. Elkins.” (CL 3.435) All the while, Howard continued to write a few El Borak stories, and several new horror stories, but his main focus was on westerns. In
fact, the last line (aside from the farewell line) in the last extant letter Howard wrote to H. P.
Lovecraft states, “I have always felt that if I ever accomplished anything
worthwhile in the literary field, it would be with stories dealing of the
central and western frontier.” (CL 3.462)

It is likely that Howard would have set Conan aside, but it is uncertain whether he would have ever returned to the character. If he stayed on track with the previous characters he set aside and never returned to, then it is likely he would have not returned to Conan. Though I wouldn't rule it out. Even so, examining his final stories, and the direction in which he stated he wanted to go, and his desire to move away from Conan stories, it seems likely that his fourth writing period would have predominantly been western stories. And if that is the case, he may have actually completed the novel about the Texas frontier.___________AbbreviationsCL The Collected Letters of Robert E. HowardOWWA One Who Walked Alone

Sunday, September 30, 2018

In the middle of June 1935, Robert E. Howard and his friend Truett Vinson took a trip to New Mexico, visiting the historic town of Lincoln, New Mexico. While on this trip, Howard sent two post cards two postcards to Novalyne Price.

At the time, Howard and Price had dated one another for a little over a year. However, by June of 1935, Howard and Price were on the verge of a falling out, and Price began dating other men: Pat Allen of Cross Plains, and Truett Vinson of Brownwood. It is most likely that Howard knew Price and Vinson were dating while Howard and Vinson traveled to New Mexico. If Howard knew, he was not letting on that he knew.

While on the trip, Howard purchased two postcards to send to Price. The first is postdated June 19, 1935.

Here is the front of that postcard:

The back (top left) of the card details the front's picture:

"The 'Horno,' or firing kiln used in connection with the production of the farmers Greta ware of Tonola, Mexico. This process results in a highly glazed surface retaining all brilliancy of the colors in the original decoration." (The above and below cards are not the actual postcards REH sent to Price, just a copy of the same postcard).

Howard wrote a brief message on the back of this postcard:

"Dear Novalyne; Roswell.

The weather is good but the beer is lousy. Hoping you are the same.

Bob."

Price details in her book, One Who Walked Alone (OWWA), that she got a kick out of this postcard, especially what Howard wrote. She stated, "I laughed like everything when I got it. It was so typical of Bob's trying to make a funny joke—his kind of humor. I liked it too." (228)

The second postcard Howard sent Price was postmarked June 20th:

The back (top left) of the card details the front's picture:

"This picture is an actual scene of one of the tragedies of the great Southwest. It is from an actual photograph by a Franciscan Priest who happened upon the snake making his breakfast."

The only thing Howard wrote on this card was:

Sante Fe, N.M.

19/6/35

Dear Novalyne;

Cordially,

Bob.

About the second postcard, Novalyne reports (in OWWA), "The next day, I got another card. The picture on that one was gruesome, and I would have liked to hit Bob hard when I saw it. It was an actual photograph of a rattlesnake swallowing a rabbit. He had done that to horrify me. And it did. There was no message on the card . . . Just "hello" and "goodbye." (229)

There's likely no motive for sending these cards if Howard knew that Price and Vinson were dating (maybe). He and Price were still on good terms, and continued dating in a friendly fashion until she moved to Louisiana in May of 1936.

Thursday, August 23, 2018

The first and one of the most brazen of
Howard’s “lesbians” is Queen Nakari in “The Moon of Skulls” (WT Jun-Jul 1930):

Nakari halted by the
couch, stood looking down upon her captive for a moment, then with an enigmatic
smile, bent and shook her. Marylin opened her eyes, sat up, then slipped from
her couch and knelt before her savage mistress—an act which caused Kane to
curse beneath his breath. The queen laughed and, seating herself upon the
couch, motioned the girl to rise, and then put an arm about her waist and drew
her upon her lap. Kane watched, puzzled, while Nakari caressed the girl in a
lazy, amused manner. This might be affection, but to Kane it seemed more like a
sated leopard teasing its victim. There was an air of mockery and studied
cruelty about the whole affair.

"You
are very soft and pretty, Mara," Nakari murmured lazily, "much
prettier than the other girls who serve me.[“] (SK 129)

Later on in the story, Nakari claims: “[...]
she shall be punished as I have punished her before—hung up by her wrists,
naked, and whipped until she swoons!” (SK
137) Marilyn later confirms: “And in spite of my pleas she took me across
her knees and whipped me until I swooned.” (SK
165) In “The Slithering Shadow” (WT Sep
1933, also published as “Xuthal of the Dust”) the Stygian Thalis who has lived
in the decadent city of Xuthal and is attracted to Conan, dishes out punishment
to her prospective rival Natala:

Seizing her by the hair,
Thalis dragged her down the corridor a short distance, to the edge of the
circle of light. A metal ring showed in the wall, above the level of a man’s
head. From it depended a silken cord. As in a nightmare Natala felt her tunic
being stripped from her, and the next instant Thalis had jerked up her wrists
and bound them to the ring, where she hung, naked as the day she was born, her
feet barely touching the floor. Twisting her head, Natala saw Thalis unhook a
jewel-handled whip from where it hung on the wall, near the ring. The lashes
consisted of seven round silk ords, harder yet more pliant than leather things.

With a hiss of vindictive gratification, Thalis drew back
her arm, and Natala shrieked as the cords curled across her loins. The tortured
girl writhed, twisted and tore agonizedly at the thongs which imprisoned her
wrists. She had forgotten the lurking menace her cries might summon, and so
apparently had Thalis. Every stroke evoked screams of anguish. The whippings
Natala had received in the Shemite slave-markets paled to insignificance before
this. She had never guessed the punishing power of hard-woven silk cords. Their
caress was more exquisitely painful than any birch twigs or leather thongs. (COC 237)

This scene was depicted on the cover by
Brundage, lovingly described by one critic:

[...] a bound woman leans
back away from her captor, the retreating body language serving only to
emphasize her pointed, bare breasts and her naked legs. Her captor, another
woman, wears a kind of skirt, but her torso is almost entirely naked as well.
And she holds a whip, which she clearly intends to use on the other woman.
(Elliot 57)

Margaret Brundage recalled in a 1973
interview:

We had one issue that
sold out! It was the story of a very vicious female, getting a-hold of the
heroine and tying her up and beating her. Well, the public apparently thought
it was flagellation, and the entire issue sold out. They could have used a
couple thousand extra. [...] Having read the story, the thought of flagellation
never entered my head. I don’t think it had theirs, either. But it turned out
that way. (Korshack & Spurlock 29)

It is worth noting that “The Slithering
Shadow” with Brundage’s cover appeared in the September 1933 Weird Tales. One month later would see
the debut of Dime Mystery, the first
of the “weird menace” or “shudder pulps” which would focus largely on torture,
sadism, Grand Guignol-style grue and contes
cruels, where stories of women, nude or near-nude, being threatened would
be much more common. While there are many proto-weird menace stories in the
pulps, “The Slithering Shadow” may have been a marker that there was an
audience for this new pulp genre.

Also in 1933, Howard wrote “The Vale of Lost
Women,” although it was never published during Howard’s lifetime. (COC 451) The beginning of the story
includes an unnamed female character whose actions toward the slave Livia are
at best ambiguous:

Sunday, August 19, 2018

In another alteration of
the basic captivity theme, Marylin is held not by a dark-skinned man, but by a
dark-skinned woman. The sexual threat is not eliminated, however, as Howard
implies a sadistic lesbian relationship, something of a recurring theme in his
work. (Trout 75)

Cross Plains, Texas

In 1926 Cross Plains, Texas was in an oil
boom, and Robert E. Howard was working odd jobs, seven nights a week, with
little time to write. His letters to his friend Tevis Clyde Smith are filled
with verse, and on occasion, sex. Growing up mainly in a small Texas town,
their sexual education would not have been in any way formal. They picked
things up through conversation, practical experience, and in many cases
reading. These exchanges would have a formative influence on how Howard
understood female homosexuality, and how that conception featured in his
fiction. Over time, this would form the recurring theme noted by Trout.

Sapphism
& Psychology

According to George
Sylvester Viereck; “Love in its spiritual aspect he (Swinburne) knows not. His
amorous fancy feeds upon the esoteric, things ‘monstrous and fruitless’. The
ordinary relation between sexes engages him only when it is sadistic.” And
again, quoting Viereck; “Modern science has divested perversion of its evil
glamor. Freud has taught us that perversity is an essential phase in the
evolution of childhood…occurring at all times in a fairly constant percentage
of human beings. Swinburne adds a new complexity. He does not turn toward his
own sex. His passion goes out to woman, but he loves woman, not with the
passion of a man for a maid, but with the hectic craving of Lesbian woman for
her own sex.”

—Robert E. Howard to
Tevis Clyde Smith, 23 Jun 1926, CL1.106

Howard quotes from Viereck’s introduction to
Algernon Charles Swineburne’s Poems and
Ballads, published as Little Blue Book #791. It is the first mention in his
letters of lesbians, and part of his earliest discussion of homosexuality and
bisexuality in general. In the same letter, Howard relates to Smith:

Thus it would seem that a
pervert is a man or woman who gets little or no pleasure out of intercourse,
but must seek some other method to stimulate the senses or the imagination.
Opium smokers revel in sexual debauches which are purely imaginary but from
which they doubtless obtain more pleasure than from actual deeds. The smoking
of opium does not produce the effect of seeming intercourse, but vague
thoughts, fantasies, float through the being dimly arousing all the hidden lust.
A pervert may be born that way, or may be a worn-out libertine who has lost his
ordinary lust through indulgence. They are usually more or less bisexual,
naturally.

That is
my theory and much of it is probably erroneous. Perversion is a mark of
decadence. It flourishes in all fading nations. Men’s virility dwindle and
fade; they feel the need of sexual desire, which has always been taught as
necessary, but they lack the basic lust. So they turn to more obscene ways. (CL1.104)

Homosexuality began to come to academic
attention in the 19th century, with works like Kraft-Ebbing’s Psychopathia Sexualis (1896), Havelock
Ellis’ Sexual Inversion (1897),
Alfred Eulenberg’s Algolagnia: The
Psychology, Neurology and Physiology of Sadistic Love and Masochism (trans.
1934) and psychosexual studies continued in the 20th century by psychologists
such as Sigmund Freud and Alfred Adler. Howard’s views in his 1926 letter
characterize “perversion” as a deviation from heterosexual practices. Although
this leaves open what exactly counts as “perversion,” it explicitly includes
homosexual acts. This would have been the common view of most laymen and
professionals during the 1920s, as when Freud wrote:

Sunday, July 22, 2018

“If I could but come to grips with something tangible, that I
could cleave with my sword!”

When Robert E. Howard revised an unsold tale about King Kull,
the gloomy ruler of Valusia, he replaced that character with Conan, a barbarian
king in a similar position, who would later be fleshed out with a wide-ranging
history, and a multiplicity of formative experiences. Along the way, the
character turned from an Atlantean to a Cimmerian, and his eye color from gray
to blue. His personality also changes in some significant ways, from the
original “By This Axe I Rule!” to the available early draft of “The Phoenix on the
Sword,” and again to the version of that story published in Weird Tales in December 1932.

As Patrice Louinet says in his appendix to the collected
Kull stories, “by writing the first Conan tale on the ashes of an unsold Kull
story, Howard was telling us that he now envisioned the Kull series a
prehistoric one, which paved the way for the Conan stories” (289).

The Conan who becomes the canonical version deals with
court intrigue and attempts to usurp his power, in ways that are similar to the
situation in “Axe.” There is a critical difference, in that Conan never declares
“I am king!,” because he doesn’t have to. A line about his suffering from the
tedious “matters of statecraft” line is taken almost word for word from the
Kull story (11, 161), but Conan starts the story with a confidence that Kull
had lacked. In “Axe,” Kull, already the king in name, comes into his full
authority, an intriguing pivotal moment in a ruler’s career. Unlike Kull, Conan
developed his full personal authority before he was in a position of recognized
leadership, and even when other characters in the story reject his rule, it’s
because of their own personal desire for power.

Kull of Atlantis(art by Justin Sweet)

This isn’t a criticism of Kull’s character, but a
reflection on the different, if related, themes their stories explore. The
situation in “By This Axe” is, despite the presence of an Atlantean, fairly
realistic, and something not often explored: a turning point in which a ruler
comes into true confidence as a leader. The themes of the Kull story are still
embedded in the Conan story when does someone with authority in name really
take on authority as a true leader? — but are expanded upon, dealing more with
the longer-term consequences of taking on the crown, and the process by which a
ruler’s authority becomes fully accepted by his subjects.

In each story, the hero takes from the wall “an ancient
battle-axe” (“ax” in the Conan version) which had hung there “for possibly a
hundred years” (Kull 173), or at least “half a century” (Conan 21). The
connotations of the axe, especially given the emphasis on its age, link it to
the barbarian nature of the main characters. When Kull takes up the titular
axe, he claims a personal authority that comes out of his past: who he is and where
he came from. Since it belongs to Valusia’s history, the axe is associated with
Kull’s formal authority, embedded in the royal structure and government, but it
also reflects his primal essence, which he uses to cut through hierarchical,
bureaucratic tangles. This satisfying moment hearkens back to a time before the
society had become so complex, with a confusing maze of laws and traditions
built up over the generations, some of them useful, but some of them unjust and
no longer worth following.

Sunday, July 8, 2018

Every year I attend Howard Days, seeing the Howard House and Museum is a highlight, especially if the shop at the back of the house has new items for sale. This year was no exception. Among the items that were for sale in the museum shop this year were t-shirts with new designs. It's not easy finding REH themed t-shirts, so getting new designs at the REH House and Museum is a nice plus.

I'm a t-shirt and shorts wearing kind of person. In fact, if I were 'allowed' to wear nothing but, that's what I'd wear all the time. In years past, I've bought at least a dozen different t-shirts at the Howard House museum. About 5 or 6 years ago, the museum shop had a t-shirt with a cool design by Michael L. Peters, and I've bought several of those over the years. A couple of years ago there was a minimalist t-shirt that had a single emblem, the REH House & Museum, on the upper left area of the shirt. But this year, the museum shop had two new t-shirt designs for sale, and as soon as I saw them, I snatched them up.

The first design has REH's signature across the top and "Museum, Cross Plains, Texas" across the bottom. There is also a picture of REH in the middle going through his signature, and on either side of the middle pic, two other pictures of REH, with Bill Cavalier's grave-site-foot-stone penciling at the bottom. Pretty cool, at least I thought so.

The second design, which sold out (I think in all the sizes), was a drawing by James Carter. This t-shirt design was a sword going through the words Robert E. Howard Days, with a banner that read 2018 at the bottom, and had a bit of a Virgil Finlay look and feel to it. Cool looking design, and I can see why it sold out.

If you were unable to attend Howard Days but still have an interest in buying one of these t-shirts (they have various sizes), then I am fairly certain that the museum is likely still selling them. You can always call this number, (254) 725-6562, and order one.